Throughout history the views of two groups of people have been systematically suppressed – atheists and women. Both by dominant religions. In Britain and Europe by Christianity and in other countries by other religions, especially Islam. For brevity I will illustrate the subject from a British Perspective.

Christianity suppressed the views of atheists and women in several ways - by asserting their beliefs through the indoctrination of children, by social control at family and community level - through politics and the law – by colluding with other powerful elites such as monarchy and military that also suppressed dissent – and though their almost total control of education and its infrastructure. The full text of this outline is in a booklet on ‘The Role of Religion in Education’ in a series called Atheist Perspectives published and distributed through secularsites and Campaign for Secular Education. The address and websites is on this CD label.

This outline covers: - The History - Its importance to the church’s mission - The effect on Schools and society – The rights Issues for children, parents, teachers and society - Its effects on teaching in Health, morality, sex and science – Our culture of Educational elitism and the effects of the church on our artistic heritage.

It is often claimed, and goes largely unquestioned by most people, that one of the good things about religion is that the Church is to be credited with promoting education for the good of humanity. What is never acknowledged is that the Church owned and controlled education, and used it for its own purposes for centuries; keeping it for the promotion of religion, the preserve of monks, priests and biblical scholars. It was the Christian Roman Emperor, Justinian who closed down the last schools of Greek philosophy, plunging Europe into the dark ages.

The first schools were started and run by the Churches, and the universities arose from the Cathedral schools of the 12th century. Although they employed lay masters, they were controlled by the Church and its monastic orders, they decided what should be taught. Education was kept away from the rest of the population, especially the ‘lower orders’, for whom real education might have been instructive as to the way society was ordered, and might have represented a challenge to Church doctrine and authority. The religions only reluctantly conceded change as and when the professions required increasing numbers of literate recruits, and later when the state and commerce required a literate work force. They fought to the bitter end to keep the Mass and the scriptures in Latin so that most people would not understand them, thus retaining their supposed ‘mystical’ qualities and their reliance on clergy to interpret them. Individuals who attained education ‘above their station’ and attempted to spread education in any way other than to sustain belief in and compliance with religion, were considered subversive and a threat to the peaceful acceptance of the status quo. A possible spur to revolution. Like all dissenters they were cruelly punished.

Women, working men, servants, and slaves were kept uneducated by the Church. Its overwhelmingly conservative attitudes towards social order, the place of women, the poor, and servant classes had over time resulted in their compliance - meekness, obedience, subservience and the acceptance of ‘the nobility of work’ etc. Though this situation was interrupted by the conditions after the massive reduction in population and consequent shortage of labour after the Great Plague in 1664.

The value of skill and labour were at a premium, which resulted in higher wages and more autonomy for working people. The church promoted the still strong ‘Protestant ethic’ that shapes our lives from cradle to grave. For the ‘lower orders’ to have access to questioning education might have enabled them to question their allocated station in life, and the fairness of their society.

The Church has always taken great care to keep education under its control from the earliest times to the present day. It has done this by dint of having the widespread infrastructure and political influence at both local and national government levels to assert its policies. Rich in land and property built up over centuries and paid for by compulsory tithes, and by its position at the centre of the structures of power and influence, it also had the resources to carry it out; enough people who were sufficiently educated to teach, in all parts of the country, money to pay them, premises in which to hold lessons and domination over the lives of parents and employers within the community. These were powerful ways to ensure compliance with the interests of the Church ways that they still try to sustain.

Education was seen as both life-enhancing in itself for the devout, and valuable for the advancement of the professions, government, law, medicine and engineering, whilst for the workers, universal primary education was embraced as a tool of direction, correction and chastisement for the poor. The widespread experience of harsh discipline and rigid training methods directed at instilling obedience and passivity, that created a compliant work force with just enough skills to perform their work, was prevalent well into the second half of the 20th century and still colours some of today’s attitudes.

These punitive methods were mirrored in the harsh training of the children, particularly the sons of the elite, those ‘born to rule’, especially in boarding schools that suppressed emotion and human compassion and taught the value of bullying and domination. According to many this is still the case in some of them, and may explain the behaviour and attitudes of those in the upper echelons of our class society, and the personal and sexual hang ups of some of the men brought up in these unbalanced institutions. This would matter less to society, if it were not these men who play such a dominant role in public life, and influenced the lives of others through the professions and government.

Even now there are schools that maintain the harsh punitive ethos that demands rigid discipline, uncritical acceptance, and strict observance of religion. Children are indoctrinated into their sectarian divides and are instinctively prepared for sectarian conflict. Some schools run by nuns and priests in Ireland, until the middle of the last century, showed the harsh discipline, physical, mental and sexual abuse, and psychological trauma inflicted on children by religious fanatics [1] They demonstrated the effect of disturbed and disordered adult thinking on the treatment that was meted out to those over whom they had almost total control, often children who were assigned to their care because of lack of family to care for them and the lack of well-run, well-funded public services.

One of the most important effects upon freethought has been the suppression of the language in which it could have been expressed and developed. The development of language is a function of education, if education is used to promote an ideology; language is one of its most powerful weapons.

Language goes hand in hand with the development of culture and ideas. If ideas are suppressed, the language in which they can be developed, discussed, and promoted is retarded. Likewise, if language is suppressed, then it will be difficult for the ideas to develop and find expression.

It is a primitive idea that if something does not have a name it does not exist, and therefore if you do not give something a name, you deny its existence.

It has never been in the interest of the religions that freethought should gain credence in people’s minds. The ability to express arguments freely and oppose religious doctrines, policies, and practices has been successfully suppressed over the centuries of religious domination. As a result, the language of atheism, humanism and secularism, has never fully developed. Freethinkers, in the modern meaning, find this lack of appropriate language a constant problem, its poverty inhibits the expression of the range and depth of free thought.

In addition, our culture and language are suffused with Christian words, phrases, sayings and references that are used without thinking – and they constantly reinforce at an almost subconscious level, the idea of Christianity as ‘normal’ and ‘essential’.

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The importance of education to the church was and still is in maintaining its mission to convert people to its beliefs - Building upon the parental role in early life. They do this by manipulating the education system - through their traditional privileged position enshrined in law and subsidised by the state - through private schools, through control of the curriculum and extra curricular activities, and through the selection of children, by demanding church attendance by parents. And they do this regardless of the effects it has on non-selective community schools and the rest of society. It ignores the social and environmental advantages of children mixing in their local schools. And would have prevented the ghettoisation that has already been made worse by sectarian schooling.

It also ignores the rights of children, teachers, parents and society.

Children have a right to expect honest, accurate and objective teaching in all subjects. Biased teaching, or the teaching of opinion a fact is an abuse of their trust. It is even more unacceptable from a state education system.

Teachers have a right not to be discriminated against in employment on grounds of their beliefs or non-belief, or their sexual orientation or lifestyle, whether they are heterosexual, or married to their partners.

Parents too have rights, not just as some claim, to indoctrinate their children, which they can do at home of church, but to expect it in state schools. Parents should be able to send their children to good non-sectarian schools in their own locality and not be discriminated against on grounds of non-belief.

And society has a right to expect state schools to takes into consideration the need for the integration of children into a cohesive non-doctrinaire community, not divided by religious affiliation and the conflict it can cause in a multi racial, multi cultural society.

It also affects minority groups, where segregating children by religion subjects them to the pressure of elders in their community, which is a matter of particular concern to some members of Islamic/ethnic minorities, and especially the pressure on women and girls to conform to religious demands they may want to resist. It can also be used to discriminate against minority communities in the funding of ‘their‘ schools.

Denominational schools have always been a divisive problem between protestants and Catholics, but is set to escalate as other religions exert pressure for their own sectarian schools and cause yet more problems of increasing numbers of schools selecting on religion and gender - wealth and class - ability and early specialisation. Including the extending of the school day, increased pressure on pupils and the problems of the traffic congestion of school run that affects people trying to get to work.

One of the most profound and far reaching effects of religious control of education has been on the lives of women and the effect that has had on the consequent development of our society. Many of the ills of society have been brought about by the absence of female influence on every area of life - and the inequalities of women in society today are the result of these deeply embedded attitudes and traditions.

Until the beginning of the last century in Britain, women were excluded from other than primary education or thought appropriate for the roles traditionally allocated to women in the home, in service and entertainment. Higher education, the professions, and therefore the decision-making institutions administration and government were closed to them. How much more balanced would society have been had women not been excluded? – Been allowed to participate and contribute their female perspectives and skills? How much more advanced would our community life be had more human resources been spent on health, secular education, science and technology; and welfare rather than being devoted to the glory of god and the church, violent conflict, religious wars and persecution? This reflected the interests of the men who dominated these political, religious and military elites throughout history.   And the history of women's oppression that is rooted in the religion's view of them as physically and intellectually inferior should be taught in our schools.

One can look back through centuries of male philosophers and poets through to the modern social sciences - sociology, psychology - In doing so you will see each generation’s scholar’s deliberations on human behaviour and the human condition, and suddenly realise that they are overwhelmingly elderly, white, middle class men. And on many subjects, those giving their learned views are those with the least experience of the practicalities of the subjects of their study – the most obviously being on learning and child development, from the doctors of the 17^th & 18^th centuries to Freud, Pavlov, Watson, and Skinner through to the present day. People who I guess saw little of any children let alone looked after them!

The attitudes of the church to women do not stop at the school gate. They still deeply influence the teaching of many subjects including history, health and sex education, as does the exclusion of a rational humanist approach to gender, sexuality and relationships - drug and alcohol information, and many moral and social issues on which religious views are narrow and doctrinaire if not downright distorted!

Of increasing concern is the pressure being exerted by fundamentalist Christians in demanding the manipulation of science teaching to accommodate their biblical beliefs on creation, superstition and belief in the supernatural. They confuse the teaching of a theory of creation based on faith and belief - as being of equal weight to a theory of evolution based on evidence from many fields of scientific study.

The effects of centuries of religious control has also had a profound effect on our artistic and cultural heritage, the arts, architecture, literature and music. Its overwhelming dominance has made it appear that religion is the only basis for the motivation and creation of great art. Whereas one might imagine how much greater it might have been had it not been constrained by the financial control of religiously motivated patronage and the exclusion of participation of so many people with other motives, and not least the half of the population born female!

We can still appreciate the art of the past - for the human talent and labour it represents and imagine how much more could have been achieved had it been for the glory of humanity, to enrich their lives, rather than for the glorification of God and religion.

Little recognised is the role of religion in creating the deeply ingrained educational elitism of our society. To be educated by the church into its theological ideas, made them part of the elite. Superior, better than others. And this is still part of our ‘common sense’ that often goes unquestioned. To be educated is to be of greater worth – of higher status, better paid and deserving of greater respect. Our entire value system and reward structure is based on educational elitism and although lip service is paid to intelligence, effort and motivation, it is educational criteria that defines our value system and pay structures and sustains our hierarchies. Religion still hangs onto its association with elitism. Theology being promoted on a par with philosophy. With considerable amounts of money still spent on theology in British Universities,

The close association between being educated, and ones status and financial resources creates a further hike in the power of religious promotion. Its advantages accumulate through having access to the means by which it can spread its message - from originally being the only people able to read and write, being able to print, publish and distribute, its propaganda has enabled it to maintain its undeserved position in society.

Even today, with premises and advertising on every street corner, its vast resources in the print and publishing industry and its traditional networks of paid activists with a finger in every local pie are the result of our history of religious control of education.

This has been the real story of The Role of Religion in Education, that most people British people, who have had at least eleven years of compulsory education, have never heard.